Ruchira's Ramblings

The mountains recede into the folds of memory, the snow disappears beyond nameless roads forking and the world flattens out into ceaseless ordinariness- acres and acres of plains sans mystery or beauty or movement, and we are moving away, encased in this marvel of modern technology, this miracle of glass and metal and comfort rushing on towards an inevitable end. We drift away from ourselves. Yet somewhere still in the world the ghost of a forgotten ocean raises its soul upward as buried past overreaches towards heaven. And one day, that churning unseen ghost life will topple the earth.   Happy moments fall flickering lightly like wondrous soap bubbles, sparkling, weightless, innocent. But then the heavy air of life touches them- with all its needs for data and details and precision, the lightest touch from the expanses of the flat lands, and the brief refracting looking glass is gone, leaving you with chores, lists and deadlines. But then you pick up the straw-pipes...

Have I drunk of the hemlock? How else do I explain this numbness of the soul?   As part of his death sentence, Socrates was offered a cup full of hemlock, and ordered to keep walking after. I read this story in fourth standard history book and somehow remembered that last part- “You must keep walking.” Years later, a professor in college explained that the effect of hemlock begins from the legs and makes its way upward, till it reaches the heart and stops it. And the brain knows the gradual numbing of the toes, the feet, the legs, the thighs… it feels the slow but certain disconnect from everything that orients it in the world, and it knows the assured arrival of death. Sometimes on the infinite cosmic stage, the trappings fall away, briefly, to reveal the utter nothingness of it all. Ennui, we term it. Must I smother my soul daily thus wasting this one, singular chance that comes with an expiry date without an alarm bell? But what feeds a soul if the body dies? The soulless...

These days, more and more, I oscillate between the need for solitude, and the longing for companionship, searching for a place where happiness truly resides. On some days, the silence in a crowded room fills me with an odd tension, a fear, if you like, and I want to fill it up with laughter, with kisses, with the sound of television, with words. On other days, the sound of other voices push against the walls of my invisible bubble, demanding that I listen, interpret, understand. And sometimes, I don’t want to understand. Sometimes, I don’t want to listen. And my castle of happiness, built of the thinnest, brightest cards of glass topples before the winds of life. I don’t claim to be an unhappy person. I smile at friends, laugh at their jokes, love my family, savour my food, marvel at the beauty the world has to offer and enjoy the everyday platter of joy that makes our one constant, inescapable journey bearable. But sometimes on a bright, carefree day, a sudden thought like a serpe...